The Dad's Business Trip to Hobbs in Which the Mom Came Along!

This year's NM Association of Counties Conference was held in Hobbs.  I have never gone with the dad to one of these before, because I always had children at home, Girls' Camp, Cub Scout Day Camp,...  This year he invited me to come along, and since I didn't have anything keeping me from it, I went!

We left on our adventure Saturday morning.  We met Carol at the temple, and we did a session with her.

Mark was sick, so he didn't come.

It was Father's Day weekend, so we took flowers to my dad's grave.  His birthday was on the 20th, so the flowers were for that, too.

We decided to look for a geocache in the neighborhood.  The dad found one here in this tree!

The tree was in someone's front yard.  There was also a huge glove sculpture in that yard.  

We went to an Isotopes game that night.  Hot dogs always taste delicious at the ball park!

On Sunday morning, we got up early and drove to Roswell to go to church.  Ron and  Cindy Wiser have the 1:00 church this year, so we just showed up and surprised them!  We ate our lunch that we packed in the park before church.

Here we are at our hotel in Roswell with stuff to keep us going for a week!

We got there on Father's Day, so I had the dad's Father's Day dinner all made and ready to microwave when we got there...

...AND I used another cookbook!

This is the entering Hobbs sign.  It is huge!

The dad was in meetings all day every day, but most of the evenings, we had together.  There was a little lake within walking distance from our hotel.

While we were there, we picked up another geocache!

Hobbs has a wonderful paved walking trail that runs about 7 or 8 miles.  It was right across the street from our hotel, so we walked 30 or 40 minutes each evening!

Another geocache.

This is the dad waiting at a quilt store for me.

This is what I did all day every day.

I finished a quilt top!  It looks better not in the picture.

This is another geocache.  We found several this trip.

We sent our travel bug on its way in this one!

Another cache...

...and another!  In Provo, there was a cache that had coordinates that took us to a light pole in a parking lot, but we couldn't find any cache there.  We discovered parking lights do this.  Next time we're in Provo...

This is the dad at an Association Dinner.  I went with him to this one.

We put a penny on the railroad tracks to see if trains actually went by.  There weren't any trains at all until our last day there...

... when this little guy rolled over our penny!

Another cache.

After we left Hobbs on Friday, we set off for Lubbock, TX to go to the temple.  We stopped in Bownfield, TX for a quick cache grab.

This is one in Lubbock.  It's my favorite one yet.  You fill the PVC pipe with water, and the cache comes floating to the top.  The pipe has holes in it so the water can drain out when you're done.  We didn't figure this one out, and most of our water drained out before we realized the cache would float to the top if we covered the holes.  We had to go buy more water and try again.

Cool, huh?

Another clever one.

This is a man-made lake in Lubbock.

The selfie king and queen.

After we left Lubbock, we stopped in Mule Shoe, TX and found a quick one.

We also stopped in Ft. Sumner, NM at the Billy the Kid Museum.  Billy the Kid was shot and killed there by Pat Garrett.

A replica of Billy's cell.

Mr. The Kid's rifle.

There were miles and miles of cholla cactus in bloom as we drove through TX.

The Lubbock Temple.

The dad wanted a picture of "Real Cast Iron" at the Billy the Kid Museum.

Throughout our trip, we went to quilt stores that are participating in this year's Row by Row Experience.  I figured I'd give it a shot this year just for fun.  These are the license plates I collected.